Oct 13 A Day in Sydney

The big event of today was a morning tea that Mum had organised for a group of high school friends - Dawn, Beverley and Jocelyn - as well as her niece Alison. Most of the ladies had travelled from out of Sydney by train, so the designated meeting spot was the Queen Victoria Building in the central city. Peter did a great job driving around town, with bus lanes and compulsory turning lanes and quite heavy traffic. Parking at the QVB is daylight robbery, but it was handy to be parked in the building. It was lovely to meet the ladies (some I'd met on previous visits) and to have a yarn with Alison (my cousin). We sat at a cafe for several hours before the high school friends headed back to their respective homes. Dawn had something like a 3 hour train ride followed by an hour and a half in the car to get home - quite a commitment to come down which was lovely. Peter and I then left Mum and Dad to catch up some more with Alison and had a fairly cursory look around the shops - not too much shopping to do at places like Guess and Jimmy Choo, which the QVB is full of!

With a rental car and a free afternoon, we asked Mum for an address from her childhood, and she came up with 36 Cameray Road, which is the house she lived in as child for several years. She was able to show us the stair rail she slid down, the window of the bedroom she slept in, and the reserve at the end of the road (Folly Point) where she could go down to the water. We then drove to 27 Renown St, Five Dock, another suburb where Mum lived with Beryl and Howard Cunningham when she was at high school. We looked so suspicious taking photos that we actually ended up knocking on the door and speaking to the current owners, just to explain what we were doing! Mum said she used to sleep on the porch - but it was enclosed back then... would be a bit chilly to do that in its current state. The house was an interesting (and common) design, with a hallway from the front door straight through to the back door, with all the rooms coming off that hallway. We stopped off at the Burwood shopping centre for afternoon tea.

We then battled the traffic back to the hotel for our last night in Sydney. We decided to return the rental car early so that we don't need to worry about it in the morning. We all decided that we weren't that hungry and would just eat up the food we had lying around - half a loaf of bread, 2 sandwiches from the plane, half a can of baked beans, half a banana, plus the option for a couple of teaspoons of plum jam and lemon honey, and about 16 Nice biscuits each. Peter and I did buy milk and ice cream, and we all mixed and matched something. We have a few weetbix left for breakfast and after that we'll have to see what the airport can do for us.

Looking back from this end of the trip, it has been a very special trip down memory lane for Mum, and super cool to be part of. It was a bonus to be able to revisit the old houses in Sydney today.

Homeward bound tomorrow. Dad is setting his alarm to ensure that we have plenty of time to eat our weetbix in the morning, always a Far Slower Process than you expect... Both the 'kids' are in bed already (8.30pm), but us 'parents' think we might wait until it's actually bedtime.